Page 1577 - les-miserables

Parted lovers beguile absence by a thousand chimerical
devices, which possess, however, a reality of their own. They
are prevented from seeing each other, they cannot write to
each other; they discover a multitude of mysterious means
to correspond. They send each other the song of the birds,
the perfume of the flowers, the smiles of children, the light
of the sun, the sighings of the breeze, the rays of stars, all cre-
ation. And why not? All the works of God are made to serve
love. Love is sufficiently potent to charge all nature with its
messages.
Oh Spring! Thou art a letter that I write to her.
The future belongs to hearts even more than it does to
minds. Love, that is the only thing that can occupy and fill
eternity. In the infinite, the inexhaustible is requisite.
Love participates of the soul itself. It is of the same nature.
Like it, it is the divine spark; like it, it is incorruptible, indi-
visible, imperishable. It is a point of fire that exists within us,
which is immortal and infinite, which nothing can confine,
and which nothing can extinguish. We feel it burning even
to the very marrow of our bones, and we see it beaming in
the very depths of heaven.
Oh Love! Adorations! voluptuousness of two minds
which understand each other, of two hearts which exchange
with each other, of two glances which penetrate each oth-
er! You will come to me, will you not, bliss! strolls by twos
in the solitudes! Blessed and radiant days! I have sometimes
dreamed that from time to time hours detached themselves
from the lives of the angels and came here below to traverse
the destinies of men.

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